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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar WaoJunot Diaz4 STARS(Riverhead, $24.95)

Junot Diaz, a first generation Dominican-American, is well known for his collection of short stories, “Drown,” published in 1996. It was Diaz’s first published book and a first for many of its readers, too, since literary short fiction collections featuring young Dominican-Americans are few and far between. Set in both the Dominican Republic and the Dominican communities of urban New Jersey, the 10 loosely connected stories are as sweet and sad as they are gritty. Plenty of readers have been checking their watches and tapping their toes ever since, waiting for a new book from Diaz.

“The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao” is a multi-generational tale, richly layered, full of twists and sharply drawn characters who surprise us again and again. Oscar, the title character, is described as a “ghetto nerd.” He’s lonely, lovesick and fat. Oscar speaks the language of the American Geek with great authenticity. His isolation is palpable – and though we spend a lot of our time in the book away from Oscar, both with his elders and with his peers – Diaz somehow keeps us aware that it’s all about Oscar.

The decades-long dictatorship that keeps the Dominican people in its grip, the growing Bergen County diaspora and the curse that may or may not plague his family are all about Oscar. We return to the literal confines of Oscar’s world better informed and more fully conscious of who he is and why his story matters.

Speaking of language, the novel is shot through with many shades of Spanish. The old folks in the D.R. speak Spanish, but so does our narrator, Yunior. In both cases, it’s deeply colloquial, alive and twitching with the parlance of its respective time, place and circumstance. High-school Spanish will not help you wend your way through this linguistic maze; even a good dictionary will probably fall short.

Not only does the book demand a certain level of comfort with colloquial Spanish, it also references C.S. Lewis, Proust and various role-playing games, and contains a generous amount of Geek Speak. It demands that your knowledge of the literary canon is at least average and that you have some basic understanding of colonialism and its impact.

The best novels challenge us and teach us. If you’ve never thought about the legacy of imperialism and how that legacy can trickle down into every facet of one particular person’s life, you will now, and it’s well worth the wait.